Hunted by the darkness hiding the light
by Silver-griffin
Summary: Hunter Ceric has been kidnapped by Mavericks and kidnapped from home. He is transformed into a Maverick, barely surviving the transformation...Really good, in my opinion...heheh...very violent...be warned....
1. The memoirs of a prisoner

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A word of wisdom from Griffin/Layen.  
  
Hey, I'm Layen/griffin...I answer ta both, ya know...WEll, let's see...bout the disclaimer thing...Mavericks/hunters/sexy guys in armor and tights is  
not my idea or creation, but every character in here you haven't heard about is basically mine, and this is my own individual work that I slaved over and worked my hiney off making...I'll update often...like once a week,  
er something...Hope ya like it...  
  
A word of wisdom from Griffin/Layen.  
  
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CHAPTER 1: The memoir of a prisoner  
  
He had been running for hours, judging by the sweat dripping down his face, matting his short silver hair. The sweaty forelocks fell into his eyes, leaving moisture that blurred his vision but did not hinder his flight to freedom. He looked over his shoulder without stopping, and fell to his knees, roots and twigs puncturing the tender flesh. He jumped to his feet, not pausing to wipe his legs clean, and began to run as fast as he possibly could. But it was not enough.  
Without warning, he smacked headfirst into an invisible wall, the electronic force knocking him off his feet leaving him writhing in agony and gasping for air. He struggled to his knees, only to find a thick cord wrapped around his neck, cutting off his air and dragging him flat against the ground. He wailed loudly, begging to be released, not ashamed of crying. He was no seasoned warrior; he was just a child, a doomed child.  
He lifted his head off the ground, just a few inches, and found himself looking into the purple eyes that haunted his dreams. "Won't you let me go?" he begged, tears clogging his voice as he sought for the help he could not risk hoping would come. "What have I done to you, Maverick?" He tried to keep himself from adding venom to the last word, but he felt sure he had failed as a grim smile spread across the monster's face, spreading until it crinkled the demon's purple eyes.  
"It isn't that you've done something wrong, boy. It's what you have not done yet, that we must have you. You are needed for...something." The boy burst into sobs before the cord at his neck cut of his air, ending his weeping. A blow aimed at his gut left him gasping for the air he could not find. He struggled against the noose, loosing the battle as he faded in and out of consciousness. The searing pain beneath his chest burned through his body to his spine. He winced and his eyes opened wide in surprise as he felt a needle slip into his flesh through his thick shirt, the fluid tranquilizing him as it was being injected.  
"You bastard..." his words drifted off, fading into the night as the black sky opened up and began to pour thick blankets of rain on the world. Like tears.  
  
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"Ceric, come here, son." The woman held out a tray of brown disks, dark cones melding onto the brown surface. She grinned widely, cheer spreading across her face as Ceric reached out and gripped one. "I made cookies, son." Ceric grinned up at the woman, his mother, and she ran a hand through his hair, twirling one of the locks around her finger idly. "You're hair's so soft. I wonder why it's silver, though."  
"Cuz silver's pretty, mommy!" Ceric giggled and jerked his head out of his mother's grip, dancing around her like a butterfly, flitting from side to side. A door slammed behind him, and he craned his neck around to see who had come inside. A tall man stood in the doorway, his hat in his hand. He ran his free hand over his face, seemingly unaware of the boy's attentiveness to his actions. He put his brown hat on one of the brass hooks hanging on the wooden plank by the door and looked up, a sleepy grin spreading across his face as his eyes scanned the pair before him.  
"Ceric, what are you doing here! Aren't you supposed to be at school?" He chuckled softly when Ceric glowered and muttered something about being sick. "These cookies smell good, Sen. Did Ceric help you bake them?" To emphasize his point, he sniffed the air loudly, grinning widely as the fumes seemed into his nostrils.  
"Of course not, Pol. He's been sick all day." Sen winked at her son, and grinned at her husband. "Come here, Pol. We need to talk about something..." Ceric looked at his mother and a frown replaced his innocent grin, mirroring his mother's. Whenever she frowned, he knew her heart was breaking each time: she never frowned unless something serious had happened. Ceric could not believe the different personalities of his mother: one second she was the happiest woman in the world, and the next...she would spend days on end weeping.  
Pol looked at Sen, concern alight in his eyes, and Ceric headed for the door, already aware of what was coming. Sure enough, Pol's words followed him out the door, "Ceric, why don't you go up in your room, and your mother and I will come up as soon as we've finished talking." Ceric mouthed the words as his father spoke them; they often spoke alone in the kitchen when his father came home from work. He could not remember a day when the three of them ate dinner as soon as his father came in the room.  
Ceric shut his door gently, not wanting to disturb the conversation that was undoubtedly underway in the kitchen. He ran towards his bed and flopped down heavily on his soft bed. He held up the picture that lay face down on his bedside table and stared at it as tears rushed to his eyes.  
A beautiful woman with long blond hair held up a purple parasol behind her head, her pink kimono clinging to her body. Her arm was linked with the arm of the man beside her with short black hair, cheerful grins wide on their faces. Two children stood in front of them, a boy with short- cropped silver hair grinning happily with his arm wrapped around a slightly shorter body. He was hugging his sister. Her hair was silver, like his, but held a hint of blonde, like her mother's. The two children were hugging and smiling widely; they were not posing for a picture like their parents. They were acting and standing like they usually did. The camera was the only planned thing about their picture.  
Ceric slammed the picture on his table, brow creasing angrily, not caring as he heard the crunch of breaking glass. He closed his eyes and held out his hand, almost able to feel the long soft hair so like his own in coloring. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes and trailed down his cheeks, the moistness reminding him of soft lips that belonged to a girl his own age, the mirror image of him...  
"Stop it, Ceric!!!" He yelled at himself, not caring if he disturbed his parents' conversation. He was thinking about her again. "Don't think about her. If you do, you'll never forget her." His thoughts constantly darted back to the girl he loved more than himself. The girl who had been stolen from him while he slept. The young girl whose heart that overflowed with love for him had stopped as they both slept. The girl he hadn't even said goodbye to. The girl he hadn't seen alive for years. The girl who was his sister.  
It had been five years since Layen had left him, stealing his life when as a replacement for her own lost life. His parents had whisked her lifeless body from him before he had been given the chance to say goodbye. "It would only upset you, son. It's the best thing. Just be strong, it'll be okay." His mother had told him that through her tears, failing at convincing him it was not going to be okay. He had spent days staring at every picture of Layen before he locked them in the attic, away from his eyes that were eager to drink just a glimpse of his Layen. She had died when she was only seven. He had been eight. 


	2. Just a prayer

He knew it was bad to dwell on the past; he had known it since the second Layen had been wrenched away from him that life would never be the same, though he hoped he could fill the empty space in his heart that Layen had given him. He cried himself to sleep more often than not, though the tears did nothing to satisfy his insatiable hunger for his sister. When he closed his eyes, he could picture the girl he had loved more than himself, as clearly as if she stood before his closed eyes.  
Perhaps the reason he believed, at first, that she was still alive was because she still lived. In his heart, he had not laid her spirit to rest. In his mind's eye, he and Layen played together when they should have been studying, laughing together over a cold bottle of anything that was liquid and in the fridge, and living together. He had not allowed Layen to die, though he was constantly reminded of her death, and not merely by his parents.  
Every breath of wind that blew whispered Layen's name into his ear. Every rustle of leaves in autumn was Layen's laugh, every drop of rain was Layen's voice calling him, subtly reminding him of the undying love that she had for him. Every second that passed was not one that stole Layen from him, widening the rift torn between the two of them; it was one more second that he treasured her even more. Every breath he drew was one Layen drew from in his heart, and as long as he lived, so would she.  
He smashed his hand against the wall, unaware-or uncaring-of the mortar that powdered itself onto his face. The sound still echoed in his room, but he was certain his parents would not make the long trek upstairs to his room; their conversation was undoubtedly more important than anything going on with their only child still living. His parents were adults living in the adult world-why should they care about the pain Ceric could not escape? They let Layen die.why would they worry about me?  
Even as his mind created such thoughts, he knew it was unfair to both him and his parents. They cared about him as much as they could; the loss of Layen had injured his parents more severely than they cared to admit, and they were not ready to love again. He swallowed deeply, as if swallowing could force the thoughts from his mind.  
He heard faint knockings and he knew his parents had finished their discussion. He glanced at the clock, surprised to see they had only been talking for twenty minutes. That was short, even by their standards; a talk between father and son lasted at most half an hour, the only bonding that existed since Layen's death. His father's loving, outgoing nature had receded into a cold, hard shell that his father had not crept out of, despite Ceric's gentle coaxing. His mother was only slightly better; she seemed a guest who participated in the events of his love, but did not want to allow herself to grow too fond of him in case night fell, and she had to return to her home.  
In a rare display of affection, she had permitted him to stay home today. He knew the reason had something to do with the mysterious phone call she had received early in the morning, sometime before school, but after his father had left. Whatever transpired on the phone sent her into sobs that quitted after an hour, despite the fact that they were strengthened yet again by quick glances at her son who quickly tired of the game to a point bordering dangerously close to disgust. When he could not take it any more, Ceric had grabbed his backpack and slung it onto his back, heading for the door, when his mother reached out and clutched his hand like a precious jewel.  
"Please, stay home today." His mother's voice wavered weakly, shaking hesitantly like the tail of a newborn puppy. He could feel himself growing annoyed at his mother; clearly something was wrong, but she had told him nothing. He shrugged off her hand and muttered something along the lines of, "let me go to school", but, to his dismay, she gripped his arm tighter, her acrylic nails pricking his skin and she said firmly. "This is not a request." She was bordering on snippy, and Ceric knew he would have to retreat to the recesses of his mind before the day was over in a futile attempt to convince himself Layen would come back home. Denial was better than disgust, the emotion his mother had placed in him as of late.  
"Alright, mom," he said curtly, his voice tight and clipped, stripped of all emotions except anger and annoyance. Tears began to well up in his mother's eyes, and he felt his heart soften. Almost against himself, he swung his arms around his mother, hugging her tightly, realizing as he did, he had not spent more than five minutes alone with her since Layen had died.  
Thus began his final day of innocence. He had no idea at the time that he could count on two hands the hours left until he became an adult. At the time, how could he have known that he would go from baking cakes- little better than making mud pies in the garden-to being the last link in a chain that had been forged as he lingered on drunkenness, drinking memories of his former blissful life.  
Suddenly he seemed slammed against the bed as his parents knocked on the door; the resounding clacks seemed to be nets shot at his heart, pulling him back to the present. He shot up to his feet and wandered over to the door, wiping his eyes as if the fogginess in his mind was an illusion caused by the sleep in his eyes. He fumbled for the knob and twisted it, pulling the door into his room. As he did, the vision of admitting a black fog of death into his room passed before his eyes. He peered around the door cautiously and was relieved to find his parents packed against each other; as bad as he considered his parents, they were far better than the foreboding menace he felt rippling off the fog.  
He plopped onto his bed, vaguely remembering the morning his sister's death had been announced to him. That day, though, he knew she was dead before they told her; his broken heart had been all the sign he needed. From the grievous looks on his parents face, he knew something momentous had happened, but he knew not the cause. Suddenly, he felt very young as the butterflies of nervousness arose in his belly. He could not form words so he met his parents' gaze with his own.  
Pol looked at Sen, obviously giving her the unfortunate task of news barer. He felt a flash of anger at the spinelessness of his father, but his crippling nervousness certainly did not make him much better. Sen glared at Pol, and Ceric stifled a grin. Pol had unwittingly given Sen the ownership of the household; his mother was now the man of the house. She took a deep breath, composing herself, but she could not find the words she wanted to say.  
Ceric found his nervousness dissolving as warm joy spread in his stomach. He would have to be the man of the house, he supposed. He had no idea. "Who died?"  
Ceric suddenly noticed the tears streaming down his father's face as he hung in the shadows behind his mother. Unnerved, he looked to his mother for reassurance, but was met with flecks of moisture dotting her eyes, as well. He jumped to his feet and grabbed his mother's shoulders, shaking her, trying to shake an answer out of her. "WHO DIED?!"  
His mother shook her head slowly and reached up to pat his face. He realized, suddenly, that he was much taller than her. Funny, the things you notice when you're in shock. The rubbed his cheek several times before parting her lips to utter the two words that would change his life forever. "You did." 


	3. Annihilation of freedom

Chapter 3  
  
Annihilation of freedom  
  
In the stunned silence that followed her words, Ceric felt the color drain from his face as the life seemed to leap from his body in an attempt to fulfill his mother's words. He swallowed, trying to force the lump of anxiety burning in his throat as he stared at his mother's tears, but he could not force himself to do anything; he could not bring himself to speak. He stared into his mother's brown eyes, pretending the thick brown color was mud, encasing him for eternity. He was already dead, after all. This way he knew the cause of his death.  
His own eyes slid closed, as though the darkness was the crushing weight of the earth. He knew that when he opened his eyes, he would be staring at a new world, one he could not understand and would not want to. Without realizing it, he understood exactly what was going on, though he knew not how he suddenly had the answers to all of the questions he had been asking himself silently all these years. His gentle face hardened into a bitter mask of malice and hate and he saw before him not the woman who had given birth to him and given him the great joy of Layen, but a monster; the woman she was.  
"You bitch!" His mother cringed and reached out, pressing a palm against his hard cheeks, but he slapped her hand away. "You horrible ungodly bitch!" His mother's eyes opened wide, and he suddenly did not care about the woman before him; she had done the unthinkable: she had killed her own child. "How could you kill Layen?!" He grabbed her shoulders and shook her as hard as he could. He was not sure how he knew it, but with one more powerful jolt, the thin vertebrae in her neck would snap in two, and she would be dead. "Goodbye, mother."  
Pain seared in the back of his head, and he felt a trickle of warm liquid seep down his neck. He reached behind his neck, frowning at the warm, moist redness covering his hands. He craned his neck around, though he knew what he would find. His father stood behind him holding a big shard of the broken glass that covered his bedside table. Though he could make out his father's grinning face of triumph through his blurring vision, he knew what he was capable of, as though a door in his mind had been opened and the fragile shell of desolation had peeled away from his body. A grin slowly spread across Ceric's face as unbridled power flooded through his veins, causing his father to cringe in fear.  
A moan sprang from his mother's lips from where she lay on the floor, but the noise brought a startling pleasure to his ears, and he closed his eyes as the sound slid across his body, warming his heart. A whimper came from before him and he opened his eyes, staring at his father. "You killed Layen, didn't you?" Ceric looked at his hands, covered in his own fresh blood. "You killed her because she was like me?"  
His father shook his head, his reaction surprising Ceric deep inside, though his outward expression did not change. "We did not kill her. Others did, but not because she was like you." He grinned like a child; a child with a terrible, blood chilling secret about to be shared. "We killed her because you were like you. Your very existence was the reason Layen died." He spat in his son's face. "Because of you, she died! The only child I ever loved was killed because of you!"  
Before Ceric could stop himself, he reached and grabbed his father around the neck, his thumbs pressed on his windpipe, choking him. His mother's frantic shrieks only heightened his anger and lust for death; the same was caused by her clawing at his face. She could not hurt him. No one could. "You are not my father, you are an insect." He looked at his father with the disgust he had masked behind pain for years. "You are nothing but a beast, and you shall be treated like one, slaughtered like one." He pried the shard of glass from his father's limp hands, a grin spreading across his face as the glass caught the light, shining like a dagger blade. "Goodbye, father," he spat. Where the glass was pressed against his father's neck, a hint of red had spread across the flesh. It will be done, he thought. Layen, I avenge you with your murderer's death.  
"Ceric, don't!" He opened his mouth to silence his mother, as he turned his face around, but instead of seeing a fragile, beaten woman, he saw a beautiful young girl his age standing in the doorway. She had one hand pressed against her breast, the other stretched out to him. Her fragile equine face was shaped with gentle roving curves; the corners of her icy blue eyes were tipped with the shining diamonds over her tears. She was a mirror image of the man who stood staring at her with his mouth agape. Even if she had not borne any physical resemblance to him, he would have known her without any difficulty. "No," Layen said.  
He cast his father aside, not caring about anything; not even his own life. Layen lived. His Layen stood before him, alive. He took a step toward her, tentatively, as though she was an apparition. He held his open without blinking, positive a single blink would reveal she was a materialization of the madness he was sure loomed in his heart; the madness that had nearly killed his parents. He held out his hand, reaching for hers, as though he would be saved from the madness that threatened to consume him by making contact with the only one he had ever loved.  
His progress to her was slow; he seemed to he kept back by a thick wall of air, pressing tightly against him, but nothing would keep him from the girl he loved. His fingers clenched several times, trying to grab her and bring her closer, though she was halfway across the room from him. He smiled a child's smile, a smile of pure unaltered joy, as he crept closer to Layen. She frowned at him, sadness lingering in the eyes locked tightly on his own. He paused and stared at her, watching her face closely. She seemed to flicker before him, as though she was...  
"A hologram!" He blinked once, and opened his eyes, not surprised Layen was not there. "So," he chuckled. "She's dead after all." He looked at his hands, now bound with thick ropes and followed them to where two strong, thickly muscled men held the other ends. He grinned and gave a quick jerk, knowing full well the ropes would fly out of his grasp, leaning his head back and releasing a bellowing roar of angst. The ropes fluttered in the breeze as he ran through the door, flying down the stairs, past the kitchen, past his father's hat and into the deep night. 


	4. The future Brings

Chapter 4  
  
The Future Brings  
  
His eyelids fluttered apart, like the wings of a butterfly, and bright light momentarily blinded him as memories flooded into his mind. He felt the side of his face, and winced as his fingertips skimmed over the mottled flesh covering his face in a canvas of blues and purples. He sighed, and cried out at the jabbing feeling in his stomach, aware of the rib poking against parts of his insides. Memories he had pushed from his mind with the pain stirred in his mind, providing him with inescapable nightmares of the past.  
"So that's how I came here," he whispered to himself. The searing white sunspots in his vision cleared and he could see where he had been placed, though his replenished sense did little to cause him comfort. He tore his eyes away from the mold-flecked walls and stared at his hands dotted with dried blood. He searched his mind for the reason the blood disgusted him so, and when he understood why, he retched on the floor beside him. The blood is your own, your symbol of madness. He leaned his head back and loosed a scream that seemed to shake the four unbroken stonewalls around him as it rocketed towards the heavens through the barred ceiling. The sun seemed to swallow all of his anger and frustration, leaving him feeling calmer, as though nothing really mattered anymore, as though his life was someone else's and he was a spectator of a game.  
He scrambled against the wall by his back, pressing himself against it, measuring the space the room allotted for him, frowning as his mind calculated to space. It was not the fact that he had less than 10 feet to each side of the square of the room; but that he knew without a doubt a tiny amount of room he had been provided without having to think about it; without having to calculate it. He had always been smart, especially in math, but he could never have estimated with his eyes, or been so confident that his answer was right. There was no other answer. His cell was 10 feet long, and 10 feet wide with 562 cobblestones on the floor, twice that on each wall, and 525 on his ceiling. The humidity in the air was 87%; combined with the warm air temperature provided him with sweet pouring down his face. And he was sure.  
His eyes began to fill with tears as his mind skimmed across the events proceeding his awakening upon the damp, molding cell. His heart began to break as he relived his actions, but not because of what he had done; because he had almost committed murder-against his own flesh and blood-so erringly, so precisely, so confidently. He could feel the shards of his heart slice against the flesh inside of his body as they slid down from where his heart had been. He would have done everything he had done last night again, if the circumstances arose, and he would have finished the job as he intended.  
He could feel his stomach begin to toss and he began to grow nauseous, disgust filling his body. He turned his head to his right, trying to swallow the foul saliva pouring into his mouth, preceding the contents of his stomach. What had he last eaten? Cookies with...his mother. His stomach muscles clenched, and his body jolted as his stomach expelled the contents residing inside. He closed his eyes, allowing his thoughts to carry him away, though they kept drifting to before he had been captured. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, wincing as the disgusting smell reached his nose, threatening to cause the same result once more. He unconsciously cast his gaze upon the pile, and felt his body grow cold with fear. Tiny flecks of dark black, like a swirling void in the depths of night dotted the mush-colored slop. Blood.  
He scrambled across the floor to the spot exactly diagonal-he knew-to the vomit, and felt sweet fear course through his body. He closed his eyes, reveling in the forbidden sweetness of a twisted form of pain, disgusted and delighted at himself. His eyes were rolling madly in his head like a frightened stallion, though he was less afraid of a tangible foe than his own insanity. He coughed, prepared for the blood which sprayed forth out of his opened mouth and layered upon his lips. He traced a trembling finger through the mortal pain and placed the finger in his mouth, laughing gently as he actions began to register in his mind.  
Then it hit him, hit him like a hammer, a crushing wall of mortar, slamming down on him, crushing him, forming him into a mangled half-human thing. He understood why he had been bound, how he had escaped, how he so unerringly nearly murdered family, why he had been followed and thrown into this cell. He understood why Layen had been taken from him. Without anger, without fear, without embarrassment, without disgust, without uncertainty, he uttered the four words that had changed his life without knowing him realizing it.  
"I am a Maverick."  
He was surprised, or as surprised as he could possibly be in his emotionless state, that he knew without a doubt he was a Maverick, an unholy demon of machine and man. He could not be machine yet, that was the reason he had been captured so late at night; he would have to be implemented with a special computer program, overriding the madness that came with transforming into a Maverick, converting them to mindless androids. Reploids, they called them. The soulless, lifeless, emotionless half-humans controlled by men other than themselves through the device of computer software, all because they had been born with special abilities. The Madness, he had heard was the awakening of the Maverick's powers; the time after their powers and gifts had been unleashed, but before they could be controlled was a time of perpetual darkness for all those directly in contact with a Maverick.  
"I am a Maverick." The words repeated themselves over and over in his head, as though each time he uttered them was a new experience, a new electrifying jolt of enlightenment. His pulse began to quicken to an untimely speed, the thumping more like the rhythm of a primal drum than a heart. He could almost detect chanting in his mind; he could almost hear the words of a primitive people singing along with the music of the drums, of his heart. His perked ears snatched at words, and the chanting began to take a solid form. His body grew cold with fear before seeming alight with an emotion he could not begin to fathom, and his head rolled back and his lips parted as he began to scream, singing the same lyrics he could hear in his mind. His words gushed forth softly and slowly at first, but as the chanting in his mind grew, so did his own imitation. His words gathered speed and volume and soon he was screaming the four maddening words.  
"I am a Maverick." 


End file.
